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Bus window hawkers in Tanzania are very strong and very cheeky people. I will be sitting, reading my book when all of a sudden the next thing I know, one has pried open the window and stuffed a BBQd corn on the cob into my face, on the end of a long wooden stick. I turn to look at him, which is immediately taken as a sign that I’m interested, so out of no where, another five corn sellers shove their burnt corn in my face too, hoping I might choose one of theirs instead. So now, I have six bits of burnt yellow lumps wiggling in my face without me even uttering so much as a single word, and I thus try to pretend to read my book once more or say "Hapana ashante" (no thank you), hoping they will get the idea and hurriedly move on to the next window, trying to get a sale before the bus moves off.

Tanzania - Of bus hawkers and mountain life

Simon Wadsworth
2007-08-28 19:27:35

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a dozen isolated mountain ranges, including the Usambara, my next stop that I had been looking forward to for a while. The bus journey itself was incredible, winding its way forwards (and backwards) through the mountains into cloud, encountering a completely different kind of Tanzanian lifestyle on the other side.

I stayed in Lushoto, the capital of the region, though from a Western perspective, the word capital is a bit of a misnomer, as it has more of a time-warped, Alpine village atmosphere. The small indoor / outdoor market is filled with colourfully-dressed Shambaa women selling exotic fruits and veg, pretty cloth and dried fish in tins, while the surrounding streets are full of busy locals going about their daily lives walking past little African cafes, women selling coal in buckets, and the ubiquitous school kids climbing trees in their uniform to get at the fruit.

Besides deliberately getting lost amongst the village roads on my first day (easy to do for a geographer with limited geographical awareness skills), I organized a 2day/2night walk to really get a feel for the region and proving to myself that mountains will always be my favourite places to travel to. There's a few areas of undisturbed forests, but the majority of the walk was through cultivated hills. However, there's something psychological about walking through mountains, that makes the place feel remote no matter how many people live there.

Picture, if you can, rolling hills covered in a hybrid mixture of exotic pines, papaya and pear trees, and indigenous forests, with patches of red rock protruding, like being carefully hacked from the mountains with an artist's chisel, and the same deep orange red rock used to construct all the small houses that have been sprinkled like chilli powder over the green forested and cultivated hills; the sounds of children playing football with makeshift plastic-bag balls, goats making, err, goat noises, men and women chopping wood ...